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Politics : High Tolerance Plasticity -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Libbyt who wrote (6146)	7/24/2001 1:43:20 AM
From: energyplay	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 23153

I owned Spieker, too and really liked it. They are headquartered on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, about 12 miles from me. On mistake I made was I didn't get enough early (May 1999) at a low price - there was heavy insitutional buying about the same time- and I sold most in December 2000, when some unit trusts were dumping. Would have done better holding until January, but sold it and bought NG stocks (like EOG, UPR, DVN) instead ;-) - should bought those on margin and held the SPK. I liked their operating style, moderate debt at low interest, etc. They also like to tie up lots of near airport space, in effect getting a pseudo-monopoly on stuff right next to airports. They are Heavily exposed to West Coast Technology. They avoided leasing to dot-coms, but have leases with many more technology firms, including telecom, semi, etc. Vacancy rate just hit 10% in the Bay Area Most of their leases are 5 year leases. Two years ago, they were getting big rent increases when the leases came up, enought to boost income about 15% per year. That won't be happening now... On the office / light industrial side, I am very confident we are heading for close to a 1980s Texas style real estate bust, wtih "see-thru" buildings, crahsing lease rates, etc. The overbuilding is not that bad, but the demand side for office space won't be back for years. The aftermath is that the "A" buildings and locations survive, the C stuff often gets torn down and turned into something else, and the "B" stuff keeps the banks and lawyers busy... SPK has almost all "A" locations (In some cases prime locations), and mostly "A" buildings, although some are getting pretty old. They listed all their buildings in their annual report, and I could scan through there and see how many I knew. If I remember correctly, EOP has a nice chart, and may run up some more. Looking at a number of other REITs, I saw quite a few bad or broken charts. I think I can buy EOP much cheaper in fall of 2002, maybe even fall of 2003.